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Saturday, October 8, 2011

1/100 Kyrios Part 10

A display of 1/100 Gundam Kyrios's transformation feature in this posting.

All the weapons are dismounted first.

The beam machine gun mount rack and remote controller (handle) are attached to the right forearm and hand respectively.

The tail behind the helmet is pulled outward, then tilted downward.

The entire head is tilted backward so that its yellow tail will be in the right position to slide through the slot on the nose unit from the backpack later.The secondary V-Fin on the chest is retracted as well.

The nose and tail units are separated ...

... and bent to their opposite faces.

The tail behind the head should fit through the slot on the nose unit accurately.

The pair of V-fin on the nose unit is lifted.

The arm's position is adjusted till the GN Condenser is in front.The hand is adjusted at wrist level to bend outward.

Adjustment done for both arms.

The shoulder is bent to the top until the end of the armor is touching the side of the nose unit.Unlike the HG 1/144 scale version, there's no extra joint to hook the shoulder armor to the nose unit, but the shoulder joint that is made of ABS hard plastic is sufficient to keep the transformed component secured in its position.

The panel on the shoulder armor (in this MA form) is rotated to the rear to cover up the blank spaces between the body and arm in top view.

Nothing is done to hide the Gundam in bottom view though XD

The leg is rotated to its side at thigh level, then tilted upward at hip level.The wing and front portion of the foot are then bent downward.

Adjustment done for both legs.

The entire foot and ankle are rotated to the top.

An extra mount rack part attached to the bottom of the thighs is used to secure the transformed legs' position.

The position of the shield's clip is moved up for one level.

Before re-attaching the shield to the forearm, the claw segment of the shield is split first to create some room in between the pieces so that they can fit through the wing.The entire front segment needs to be bent outward first as well.

Done for the shield's configuration.

The beam sub machine gun is attached to the mount rack as the last step of the whole transformation sequence.

More images of Gundam Kyrios in MA mode:

The transformation sequence is very simple, almost too simple I would say. ^^; I remember years ago I did mentioned to a friend that, "If you can call Gundam Kyrios's transformation as complicated, then Zeta Gundam'sfeature must be godly, while Double Zeta Gundam's transformation would be unexplainable." XD

Most of the MA mode's features are in plain sight in Gundam form anyway. There's no special design feature to hide the nose and tail units. Same thing can be said about the wings on the legs as well. On the other hand, there's no special configuration to hide the Gundam in MA mode either. ^^; The entire body is totally exposed beneath the MA mode. ^^; As a direct result of that, this is a design that looks good from the top only. ^^;

I suppose I would say the same about Gundam Kyrios in Gundam form as well. It's pretty good-looking from the front, but the huge "backpack" looks more like a burden in rear view. ^^;

Then again, simple transformation gimmick is not all bad, and I do acknowledge that. Without too many complicated transformable parts, the overall articulation can be retained for rich action poses just like all the other Gundams in the series. That's a good thing. There's no point if the transformation sequence needs 100 pages in the manual to work through (awesomely complicated but fun that is), but the model kit can't move at all because of that. ^^;

One a related note, there's a trend in recent years for Bandai to simplify the transformation sequence of very complicated model kits through part-swapping (often very smart designs with "wicked" parts) to retain the kits' articulation ability. HGUC Double Zeta Gundam and Delta Plus are my picks as the prime examples of this treatment.

Just from the top, it's indeed a very nice design. Together with the nose and tail units, all the armor parts on the back, rear skirt armors and the two shoulder panels create a coercive display and black and orange parts, which seems really appealing. Furthermore, in MA mode, the huge area of metallic green sensor unit (?) in front of the nose is fully exposed. Very much like the clear green GN Condenser on the chest in Gundam form, the green portion of the nose is the highlight of this MA. The three yellow fins are pretty nice to see as well. Their design helps to establish the relationship between this MA mode with its Gundam form as well, since they look very much the same like the secondary pair of V-fin on top of the chest in Gundam form, which in turn is also a major similarity shared with the other three Gundams in the anime.

At the very least, the MA mode has a pretty good aerodynamic design to it, which has to count for something positive about its design. XD

Back to more action poses from this kit in Gundam form in the next posting, which is going to be the last one in this review series.

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About Me

After obtaining his Bachelor of Business (Information Systems), Ngee Khiong pursued his post-graduate studies in Master of Multimedia from Swinburne University. Prior to joining as a full-time teaching staff, Ngee Khiong has worked on the design of several commercial web projects, as well as teaching as a part-time lecturer in Swinburne Sarawak. After ending his near eight-year teaching career, Ngee Khiong is now working as an administrative staff at Sarawak Energy Berhad.